The death on Saturday of an Evans City man in an ATV crash is yet another reminder that Pennsylvania’s rules and regulations regarding all-terrain vehicles need to be strengthened, and more needs to be done to prevent the death or injury of young people in particular.

ATV accidents and deaths, particularly those involving teenagers and young children, have been occurring at alarming rates for decades.

In 2012, there were more than 105,000 ATV-related injuries treated in emergency rooms across the United States, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Pennsylvania, with 646 reported deaths from 1982 to 2013, ranks third nationally in ATV-related fatalities, behind Texas and California.

An estimated 25 percent of all ATV-related injuries in 2013 involved a person younger than 16. Of those, an estimated 13,100, or 52 percent, involved a child younger than 12.

That is ridiculous — and unacceptable. It should be a call to action for our state legislature, which needs to consider overhauling how the machines are regulated.

Current state law allows anyone 16 years of age or older to operate an ATV on public land. Read further and you learn that children as young as 8 years old are allowed to operate an ATV in public, as long as they complete a safety course and are supervised by an adult. When people are on private property the rules are even more lax: There’s no age restriction at all.

ATVs are dangerous and unpredictable even in the hands of an experienced operator. In December of 2012, a 53-year-old Buffalo Township man died after an ATV rolled on top of him and suffocated him while he was trying to retrieve a deer he had shot in Armstrong County. The cause: A steep hillside.

The often terrible decision-making skills exhibited by ATV operators are also cause for concern. Earlier this year a 10-month-old girl was flown to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh with a head injury after an ATV driven by a 27-year-old woman crashed on the 200 block of Allison Road. Police said two other children, a 4-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy, were also on the vehicle at the time.

There’s no sure-fire way to stop people from making negligent and irresponsible decisions. But a good place to start is awareness and training.

The state should require all adults to complete online safety and driver training courses before they buy an ATV.

For teens and parents of minors, those requirements should include hands-on training and safety courses.

Finally, the state should ban the use of ATVs by anyone under the age of 12. No driving; no riding as a passenger; nothing.

The machines have simply proven themselves far too dangerous to make any other course of action responsible.